Lost from Notification Area (XP SP3)

The Icons for â€śVolumeâ€ť and â€śSafely Remove Hardwareâ€ť have disappeared from my Notification Area.
I have set the Task Bar Properties for â€śCustomize Notificationâ€ť to â€śShowâ€ť and still do not seem them.
Does that mean they are no longer running?

Re: Lost from Notification Area (XP SP3)

As for the Volume icon:
- Activate the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel.
- Clear the "Place volume icon in the taskbar" check box.
- Click OK.
- Activate the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel again.
- This time, tick the "Place volume icon in the taskbar" check box.
- Click OK.
Does the Volume icon get displayed now?

The "Safely Remove Hardware" icon is only displayed when appropriate, as far as I know.

Re: Lost from Notification Area (XP SP3)

I found the following suggestion:
- Insert a USB drive.
- Right-click any drive in My Computer or Windows Explorer.
- Select Properties from the popup menu.
- Activate the Hardware tab.
- Select your USB drive in the list of drives.
- Click Properties.
- Activate the Policies tab.
- There are two options in this tab. Whichever one is selected, click the other one, then click OK.
- Repeat, and restore the original setting.

Re: Lost from Notification Area (XP SP3)

In addition to Hans' suggestions you might want to consider that the Task Bar "tray" has occasionally been flaky for many of us ever since the inception of XP. Almost every boot I find one or more icons missing from the tray and if I open Task Manager I find that the appropriate process is running but the icon doesn't show in the tray. Sometimes I close the process and restart it and that does the trick and at other times I have to reboot to get all the icons visible. I don't think anyone has ever figured out why this happens, at least not that I've seen demonstrated.

Re: Lost from Notification Area (XP SP3)

Hans,
This suggestion did not do anything.
Your previous with rundll32.exe suggestion did work and put the Icon back in the Notification Area;
however, neither Icon will stick.
They are not there after a system restart

Re: Lost from Notification Area (XP SP3)

I don't have a real solution for you.
You could create a shortcut to start the Safely Remove Hardware dialog as described in <post:=753,512>post 753,512</post:>, and another shortcut to display the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel (target: mmsys.cpl).
If you place these shortcuts on the desktop and/or in your Quick Launch toolbar, you'll at least have the functionality within easy reach.

Re: Lost from Notification Area (XP SP3)

Al,
Are you using Professional or Home edition?
I had to have the system rebuilt a couple of weeks ago after the December security updates completely messed up the system,
with some help from MS Tech support.
I had Click-Away check for disk problems and they formatted and installed XP Professional.
The original system was XP Home and never saw this problem in the last 5 years.